As one of the most popular foods on the planet, chili comes in many forms, but which one is the best? Is it the Traditional Red? Your secret family recipe? Or a ‘Freestyle’ blend of whatever pleases your mouth? The world’s best chili cooks will spice up Las Vegas at the World Open Chili Championship and find out who has the best chili on the planet.

Choosing from all three major sanctioning bodies, The World Food Championships will accept the champions of the world’s premier chili competitions to compete in Las Vegas.

What will start as a host of the absolute best championship chiliheads from across the planet, will end up with just one winner… the World Open Chili Champion.

Competition Structure

In 2013, the World Food Championships is unveiling a “tournament-style” cook-off process for all of its category competitions. The competition structure will be split into multiple rounds, including an opening “Challenger” round, a Category Finals round, after which each category champion will advance to the Final Table.

Competition Schedule

Thursday, November 7 – WFC Competition Round (Competition Red Chili) – Turn-ins and Judging for the Red Chili category will take place on Thurs., Nov. 7. Competition Chili is what most chiliheads know as “Traditional Red”, so no beans, no pasta – just meat, veggies and spices. Real chili. Bring it on!

Friday, November 8 – WFC Competition Round (Freestyle Chili) – Turn-ins and Judging for the Freestyle category will take place on Fri., Nov. 8. Freestyle is anything goes, so bring on the pasta and beans or whatever makes your best chili recipe great. People’s Choice - There will be a mandatory People’s Choice competition on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8. The People’s Choice competition is for bonus prize money ONLY. Scores and results from the People’s Choice competition will NOT affect WFC Challenger Round scores.

Saturday, November 9 – Category Finals – The top finishers in the Challenger Round will advance to Saturday’s WFC Category Finals.

Competition Rules and Turn-in Information are included in the Competitor Packet linked above.

The World Open Chili Championship will be limited to the first 88 entrants who are fully qualified, registered and confirmed. Any qualified entrant who wants to compete after the field is full must seek a special exemption from the WFC competition committee..

The entry fee for the World Open Chili Championship is $150 per competitor/team. The registration period for the World Food Championships will begin on April 15 and end on October 22, 2013.

WFC Qualifying Events

As of this announcement, the following events have been identified as Automatic Qualifiers into the World Open Chili Championship.

INDEPENDENT

WFC SPECIAL INVITATIONS

The Top Five Overall finishers in the 2012 World Open Chili Championship

Additional qualifying events and opportunities, including a possible Wild Card entry process, will be announced in the future and added to this list. Check back here for the latest information.

If a Champion is not able to accept the invitation and participate in The World Food Championships, invitations will be extended to the 2nd place (or runner up) of the same competition from the same respective category. In the event that more than one of these special invitation events or divisions are won by the same Chili team, additional events will be added to the invitation roster.

Rules, processes and tournament structure for the WFC are subject to change, but all decisions made by the WFC competition committee are final.

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